Advanced reactor development must account for safeguards challenges: Stimson

摘要

The development and deployment of advanced reactors must account,ideally early in the design stage, for the challenges such new reactorand fuel designs, and particularly the back end of their fuel cycles, willpose to the international system of non-proliferation safeguards,according to a new report from the Stimson Center.“A new generation of nuclear power reactors will change howspent nuclear fuel is managed. Challenges in final disposal, fuelreprocessing and recycling, and the implementation of internationalsafeguards approaches should be considered as part of a morecomprehensive preparation for these reactors’ deployment from thedesign stage, or else the sector will risk exacerbating existing tensionsat the intersection of nuclear waste management and nonproliferationissues,” Rowen Price, the report’s author and a research assistant withthe Nuclear Safeguards program and the Partnerships in ProliferationPrevention program at the international relations think tank, said in thereport released Feb. 17.